On Friday, I had the day off from work. Laying in my bed, I heard the noise of garbage trucks and weed wackers and wondered if that happened every Friday and I was never there to hear it or if something was going on. Something was going on.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday there were multiple cops on our block at all times. They were pulling people over to check ID's and enforcing the permit parking on the block.The neighborhood had a strange vibe... there was excitement and caution. (I don't remeber feeling such opposite things coexisting since India).
There is an excitement that the violence in the neighborhood will decrease, that drug traffic will not hold the neighborhood hostage, that people can just enjoy spending time outside with their neighbors. Those are things that I feel as well and am thankful for. It is nice to hear the older crowd on the block say that this is the way it used to be- the community pulling together, the streets and empty lots cleaned up and the drug sales somewhere else.
There is also a caution that the same policing that benefits our neighborhood may also be a burden, that the constant patrolling breaks the spirit of those not doing anything wrong, that the ticketing catches people without mallicious intent. It's hard to hear my neighbors (that I like to think I have become friends with) concerned for their husbands or 13 year olds to walk around the block without their ID's, to have their parenting questioned by strangers and to wonder if the reason all this is happening is because of upcoming elections instead of concern for saftey. Those polar realities look like something of an internal gymnastic championship in my brain.
On the one hand, I feel guilty that I am not being watched with such scrutiny as the black men on my block, that I haven't experienced the same fear my neighbor has about her son being mis-labeled, that I don't know the families who are hurting from these arrests. Does that make me one of "them"?
On the other hand, I feel guilty that I question the motives of those at the press conference, that I scoff at people coming to "help" our neghborhood, that I am angry about laws being enforced and at my perceptions of the men risking their lives to protect me and my neighbors. Does that make me one of "them"?
I wish that every drug dealer or gangster could be categorized as good or bad. And yet, if I know that would be an injustice. In the same way, I wish that every policy or police officer or politician could be categorized as good or bad. And yet if I settle on that, I feel I have done them the same injustice that I feel has happened to the young men arrested on Thursday.
Justice feels hard to truly achieve. It probably is unrealistic to expect the system to be more restorative than punative. We don't have the staffing to assess every peron's situation and we don't have the funding to run effective individualized rehabilitation programs. But I wonder if we have the resources to manage a generation of ex-convicts unable to get jobs, disconnected from the social/educational resources of their peers, with no vision of anything different. I'm willing to recant on this if I learn and grow differently, but it just seems like the resources are misplaced. I'm sure these ideas are not new, but I feel them acutely now.
Regardless of the dissonace I feel about the political issues, it cements my devotion to youth who are figuring out what their role is in the world. It makes me believe that Dreamer and Yakira can change their generation and in doing so, the world. It makes my heart cry out desperate prayers for the Spirit of the Living God to move in North Lawndale. It wells up a hope that things will not always be undone... He is coming to make all things new.
